Abu Nidal

Abu Nidal (May 1937-16 August 2002), born Sabri Khalil al-Banna, was the leader of the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), a terrorist group from Palestine seeking to attack Judaism across the world and destroy Israel.

Biography
Abu Nidal was born in May 1937 in Jaffa, Mandatory Palestine, United Kingdom (present-day Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel) to a wealthy Palestinian man who owned 6,000 acres of land and a twenty-room house with the only private swimming pool in the area. The family fled to Bureij in the Gaza Strip, under the control of Egypt, where they were dependent on the United Nations for oil, rice, and potatotes. Abu Nidal's childhood led to him becoming a deranged killer; he drank whiskey every night, had a mental world of plots and counterplots, and was chaotic and a psychopath. After living in Saudi Arabia for a while, Abu Nidal moved to Amman and founded a trading company called Impex that was used as a front by the Fatah party of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). After the PLO made a ceasefire with King Hussein I of Jordan during Black September, he called for greater democracy in Fatah and founded the Abu Nidal Organization, which was a violent terrorist group that fought Jordan and Israel alike. In 1973, when Black September Organization leader Abu Daoud was arrested by Jordan, Abu Nidal threatened to blow up a building where King Hussein and UN delegates met, and forced Jordan to release Abu Daoud. After Iraq informed Jordan that Abu Nidal worked for them in the operation, the PLO considered him an Iraqi puppet. In November 1973, he was expelled from Fatah.

In 1982, his first attack was the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom. The attempted hit led to the Lebanese Civil War, a chaotic situation. In 1985, he attacked the Rome and Vienna airports, killing 16 and wounding 99. In response to the 1986 Operation Eldorado Canyon bombing of Libya by the United States, Abu Nidal killed two British teachers and an American. Also in 1986, Pan Am Flight 73 was hijacked as it left Karachi in Pakistan, and 20 passengers were killed. In 1986 he moved out of Syria and moved to Libya, and he and dictator Muammar Gaddafi became close friends.

However, he was expelled from Libya in 1999 after Gaddafi tried to distance himself from terrorism following the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and he fled to Baghdad in Iraq. On 16 August 2002, Iraqi police found out that he was a suspected spy for Kuwait and Egypt, and they interrogated him at his home. His job was to find out if Iraq had any links with al-Qaeda, but he was caught first. Before he could be moved to a more secure location, he asked to change his clothing. He entered his bedroom and shot himself in the mouth multiple times, killing himself.